I am trying to deal with my existing document tree and indexing & syncronizing. I have at least one subfolder of one folder I want to AVOID showing up in my index (ChronoSync’s “_Archived Items” folder).
Is there a way to create a smart group that says something like “Path is not like _Archived Items/”?
Thanks.
That’s not possible. But how would the smart group solve the problem? Do you want to view the database as a flat list?
No, for example…
Say I want to display and search only PDFs in, say “Work” folder, which also has the “_Archived Items” subfolder. These are safety copies that ChronoSync makes to make sure you don’t lose overwritten or deleted records. I want to index and search the current version, but I get all of the archived versions showing up in the same list. Not only clutter, but may contain outdated information.
I just want to exclude the results based on a wildcard, and ideally if the path was as visible to the engine as all the other metadata, this should be simple.
You could exclude the “_Archived Items” group (and its contents) via the option “Exclude … from search” of the search panel. Please note that this has to be applied to both the group and (!) its children.
I too was quite puzzled by not being able to exclude specific groups or tags, especially since the manual says of the Smart Groups editor:
I tried adding “NOT” and “!” to a tag field, but it didn’t work. Disappointing, in view of DT’s powerful search capabilities in other respects. I haven’t missed anything, have I? This is DTP 2.0.3.
A rather brutal approach, and a bit tedious too, if children are not included automatically.
+1 for allowing ‘Not’ in searches. It’s a basic part of search functionality, I’m surprised and disappointed it’s not already there.
I totally agree!
In my system, every item gets some sort of tag. Because of this, I need to make a Smart Group that could list every item that is untagged.
That said, does anyone have any clever workarounds that could let me accomplish my goal?
The original poster is looking to filter out a particular group. You can easily create a Smart Group to list all documents with no tags.
Thanks, Greg. I wasn’t aware I could do that.
To give more detail, what I really need though is a Smart Group that shows documents not tagged with a particular tag.
The rule I have for my organization system is that every document needs to be tagged with a tag in three categories 1) Vendor 2) Recipient 3) Scope. I have it set up where things like Cable Company, IRS and Restaurant are sub-tags under “Vendor” for example. So applying “Cable Company” to an item would automatically apply the Vendor tag.
Being tagged with a Vendor tag is not enough. A document should have a tag from each of the three categories to satisfy my scheme. Something like “Show Instances not tagged with Vendor OR Recipient OR Scope”
Is there a way to accomplish this or something similar?
There is currently no easy way to create a Smart Group to do what you want. It can be done, but it is not pretty and it assumes that you don’t otherwise use the meta data ‘Flag’, ‘Unread’, and ‘Locked’. It also assumes that every document in the database should be flagged with all three of the tags you use as example. If that’s not the case, see * below. I would consider doing this to be a one-time deal-doing this on a regular basis would be a PITA for me.
If you want to give it a try, go into the Three Pane view, select all the sub-tags under ‘Recipient’, click in the upper-right document pane, Command-A to select all, then apply the flag using ‘Data>Mark>As Flagged’. Repeat for ‘Vendor’ using ‘Data>Mark>As Locked’ and again for ‘Scope’ using ‘Data>Mark>As Unread’. At this point, all documents that have a tag for ‘Recipient’, ‘Vendor’, and ‘Scope’ will have all three ‘Mark’ meta data categories assigned. Using the Smart Group below, all documents lacking one or more of the three tags will be returned.
Then, once everything is tagged, you can use the Smart Group below to list all documents in the database, select them all, then run the ‘Data>Mark>…’ commands to unflag, unlock, and mark them read.
As I said, it’s not pretty but it will get you what you need in the end-hope this helps, and hopefully this functionality will appear in DT in the near future.
Edited to add the following: the above scenario caps at three tags, although one could add a step and change the Smart Group to apply a label to add a 4th tag to the mix. A 5th tag would not be possible using labels, as only one label can be applied to any one document.
+2
I’m also missing this very basic feature sooo much at the moment!
[size=50] (at least it seems to me too that it is very basic feature)[/size]
it should be possible in a smart group to
a) exclude items with a certain tag
b) exclude items existing (also as a replicate) in a certain group
please implement that a.s.a.p.!
+3… add to the encore for search ‘NOT’ predicate; I do a lot of extra squirrelly work to get around and many things simply forgo… I would strongly vote for this to be high on the next release feature set…
ken
+4 I totally agree!
+5 I’m so shocked it’s not there that I barely cannot write…
I realise this is an old thread, but the problem is it about seems still to persist. I bought my license for DTPro yesterday and am in the process of importing and adapting quite a large database.
I absolutely need smart folders which follow the syntax: “has tag A and/or tag B, but not tag C”. I still can see no possibility to attain this. I think this is a very basic search syntax, and can not imagine that it should not be implemented in DTPro.
(I understand that I can search: “has tag A AND has tag B AND has NOT tag C”; but what I need is the combination of OR and AND NOT in one search.)
Please let my know if this impasse I am in is due to (hopefully) my own fault / bad eyesight.
Is there any way to make a smart group with the required syntax?
Oh! That looks excellent!
Now I’ve been searching for this “any” option everywhere to no avail … just wanted to post a screenshot that in my version of the program it is absent. And then somehow the screentip about option-clicking flashed up …
Thanks for your swift help. Work can go on!
No problem. I hope you see how simply logical the approach is to help you construct any future queries. Cheers!
:^)
